Tag Archives: Disease

News

British boy becomes first in the world to have stem cell transplant

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Science Daily explains what the scientists did.

Excerpt:

Dr Mark Lowdell, Director of Cellular Therapy at Royal Free Hospital and a senior lecturer at UCL Medical School, received the donor trachea from Italy and some bone marrow from the patient at the beginning of surgery.

They stripped cells from a donated trachea, used it to replace the entire length of the damaged airway, and then used the child’s own bone marrow stem cells to seal the airway in the body.

He and his colleagues prepared two different types of stem cells from the bone marrow together with some growth signalling chemicals and returned them to GOSH with the donor trachea.

Professor Paolo Macchiarini, from Careggi University Hospital, who is an Honorary Consultant at GOSH and Honorary Professor at UCL, applied the cells and the growth factors to the trachea in the operating theatre.

Martin Elliot, Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at UCL and Director of the Tracheal Service at GOSH, led the operation to repair the damaged aorta and implant the new trachea.

The application of this technology — which has never been used on a child before — should reduce greatly the risk of rejection of the new trachea, as the child’s stem cells will not generate any immune response.

Now, it seems to me that the pro-abortion lobby is always asking for laws and subsidies to push for more and more embryonic stem-cell research. And no wonder, since they want to protect their profitable abortion business from public disapproval. But where are the real cures coming from? It seems to me that adult stem cell research is leading to all the significant medical breakthroughs. (Here’s another one from Science Daily, for example)

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Videos

ABC News reports on how adult stem cells produce innovative cures today

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Great video, and only 3 minutes long. (H/T Laura from Pursuing Holiness)

My previous posts on ASCR

Previous posts on abortion

News

How psychology medicalizes character flaws to remove personal responsibility

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Story from Town Hall from moderate conservative George Will. (H/T Muddling Towards Maturity)

Excerpt:

The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry’s encyclopedia of supposed mental “disorders,” is being revised. The 16 years since the last revision evidently were prolific in producing new afflictions. The revision may aggravate the confusion of moral categories.

[…]This DSM defines as “personality disorders” attributes that once were considered character flaws. “Antisocial personality disorder” is “a pervasive pattern of disregard for … the rights of others … callous, cynical … an inflated and arrogant self-appraisal.” “Histrionic personality disorder” is “excessive emotionality and attention-seeking.” “Narcissistic personality disorder” involves “grandiosity, need for admiration … boastful and pretentious.” And so on.

If every character blemish or emotional turbulence is a “disorder” akin to a physical disability, legal accommodations are mandatory. Under federal law, “disabilities” include any “mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities”; “mental impairments” include “emotional or mental illness.” So there might be a legal entitlement to be a jerk.

[…]Furthermore, intellectual chaos can result from medicalizing the assessment of character. Today’s therapeutic ethos, which celebrates curing and disparages judging, expresses the liberal disposition to assume that crime and other problematic behaviors reflect social or biological causation. While this absolves the individual of responsibility, it also strips the individual of personhood, and moral dignity.

James Q. Wilson, America’s pre-eminent social scientist, has noted how “abuse excuse” threatens the legal system and society’s moral equilibrium. Writing in National Affairs quarterly (“The Future of Blame”), Wilson notes that genetics and neuroscience seem to suggest that self-control is more attenuated — perhaps to the vanishing point — than our legal and ethical traditions assume.

Related to our recent discussions about personal responsibility and blaming others.